T dinner time Ann gathered from the conversation at the hotel table that the steamboat was going up the river that afternoon. A fresh anxiety attacked her. Would they put Chako aboard an send him away?
Afterward, observing the men strolling down to the landing place to see the boat off, she casually followed after, a white-faced little figure with her head gallantly held. She did not think about what she was doing. She had as yet no coherent thoughts about Chako—what he was, or what he was to her. It didn't seem to make any difference. She simply felt, and had to yield to her feelings.
The landing place was at the other end of the street, on the Campbell River side of the settlement. Noll Voss tagged along with Ann. The “workingman” did not seem to have much to do to-day, except to bother her. He was burning with curiosity to learn what had taken place between her and Cal Nimmo, but Ann ignored his hints. He vented his spleen in abuse of Cal.
“A bad actor! At his age, too! He's back of all the trouble here. Calls himself mayor of the place! They only made him mayor because he can drink the most of any man here without showing it. Mayor! He had ought to be called the town barrel!”
Ann paid no attention.
The ramshackle little steamboat went off up the river, furiously kicking up the water behind. Having satisfied herself that Chako was not aboard, Ann returned to the hotel with a lighter heart. All the men were drifting back toward Maroney's, and Cal Nimmo fell in beside her. There was an offhand friendliness in his manner that warmed the lonely girl's breast.
“This is a man,” she thought, comparing him with the peevish moralist on the other side of her.
Cal, taking it for granted that Noll Voss was not in her confidence, made no reference to their talk of the morning. He pointed out the sights of Fort Edward as they walked along. The Japanese Short Order Restaurant—smart fellows, those Japs! Sent out five hundred a month in post office orders, and nobody had a word to say against them. Siwash Jimmy's—that was the joint where the Swedes got cut up, that made so much trouble—the worst den in camp; but there's always got to be one such place, like a cesspool, to collect the drainage.
Ann saw her opportunity.
“I heard there was a fight there last night,” she said carelessly.
“Nothing out of the common,” Cal said, and immediately called her attention to the fine corner that was reserved for a church.
There was considerable talk, he said, as to what kind of a church they'd have. As for himself, he didn't care, so long as they got a real man for a parson.
Ann could now ask quite naturally:
“Which is your house, Mr. Nimmo?”
He pointed between two of the buildings on the north side of the street, to a comfortable-looking log shack that stood a little way back among the scattered, leaning pines.
“That 'll be across the track when the railway comes through,” he said with a grin. “It ll be the swell residential section, I reckon.”
Ann's avid eyes devoured it; but no long lad lounged at the door, no yellow head showed at the window.
All the rest of the way Ann was beating her wits for some innocent-sounding way to bring in Chako's name. Her breast was crying for some word of him; but she dared not risk it. Cal was too keen.
When they got to the hotel, Cal said, with a look at Noll Voss:
“Shall we go inside?”
Noll was obliged to remain out on the platform, biting his fingers. Cal and Ann sat down by the back window again.
“What did you find out?” asked Ann.
“Your father did not go down the Spirit River last year,” said Cal. “I knew it before, but anyhow I asked those fellows.”
“Then you think—” said Ann.
Cal did not answer her directly.
“You're a sensible girl,” he said in a gentler voice, “and a plucky one, or you wouldn't be here at all. It isn't as if he'd been a regular father to you—”
Ann interrupted him quietly.
“Then you think he's dead?”
“I'm sure of it,” said Cal.
“How can you be sure?”
“Well, I'm like a man who's had but one book to read all his life long. I know this country chapter and verse. What is hardest for newcomers to understand is that nothing can be hid up here. That's because a man must keep in touch with his grub, see? There are only two ways to get out of the Stanley River country, and I can tell you positively your father never came out after he went in there two years ago.”
“But he may still be there.”
Cal shook his head.